Latin Extended-D

This range was introduced in v. 5.1 of the Unicode Standard, containing 114 characters. Of these, 84 characters were part of the Private Use Area of the MUFI character recommendation v. 2.0. They have now been included in the Unicode Standard as the result of a proposal from Michael Everson and others. This range contains a number of ligatures used in Medieval Nordic manuscripts and an even larger number of general Medieval abbreviation characters.

The ‘y+y’ letter (ligature) was introduced by the Icelander Jón Ólafsson from Grunnavík in the 18th century. Cf. Jón Helgason, Jon Olafsson fra Grunna- vik, Copenhagen 1926. Due to its graphical shape, it has been called a ‘v+y’ letter in the Unicode Standard.

The Medieval Nordic form of this character is based on the Old English character WYNN (01BF), but it is open at the top, and often has a dot above to distinguish it from ‹y›. It was used to denote /v/ and is always rendered with ‹v› in simplified transcriptions. Since it was borrowed from Old English, it is usually referred to as an Insular character, although it ultimately derives from the Runic alphabet. However, at the time of borrowing in the 11th century, the runic character ᚹ (16B9) had been replaced by ᚢ (16A2) in the younger futhark.

The two characters above are used as suspension marks in a number of contexts, e.g. for ‘et’ in ‘videlicet’, for ‘us’ in ‘quibus’, ‘omnibus’, for ‘ue’ in ‘ne- que’, ‘cumque’, for ‘m’ in ‘nam’, ‘omnem’, for ‘est‘ in ‘prodest’, ‘interest’, etc. In the paleographical literature, it is usually described as “a sign looking like the number 3”. It is difficult to find a wholly suitable name; the name proposed here takes the abbreviation of ‘et’ in ‘videlicet’ to be prototypical.

Another form of the ‘con’ abbreviation character looks like a reversed ‘C’. This character, which also was used as a Roman numeral and as a Claudian let- ter, antisigma, has been listed under the character ‘C’ above.